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Southgate renovation is nearly complete

After 100 days of construction work, Southgate Village Shop’s renovation is nearly complete.

The storefronts of nine retail spaces in the plaza, located on Siesta Drive, were renovated to update the building. Contractors are completing the finishing touches of the retrofit work, said Mark Sharff, owner of the storefronts in the plaza that underwent the facelift.

“We are within days of being finished,” said Sharff. “We are just putting in some finishing touches.”

The renovation work upgraded the front of the storefronts.

“We took it from a class D to a class B property,” Sharff said.

Pita’s Republic restaurant, which serves healthy Mediterranean food, is going into one of the remodeled spaces, the only one that is currently vacant. The restaurant chain has 18 other locations, with several in the Tampa area.

“This will be his first Sarasota-based restaurant,” Sharff said.

Sharff purchased the plaza spaces in 2010. There had been a high turnover among tenants. At the time, customers were welcomed to the strip mall by a rusty sign and an absence of parking-lot lines.

The Southgate Village plaza is located directly across from the Westfield Southgate Mall.

After Pita’s Republic moves to the plaza, all of the spaces will be rented, Sharff said.

Mall hauls in a new eatery The Westfield Southgate Mall signed a replacement tenant for a large vacant sit-down restaurant.

The mall announced in a release Wednesday, Oct. 31 that the new eatery will be Ziti. Ziti is a new concept that will feature an Italian-American-Asian fusion menu, the release said. The restaurant, which will serve lunch and dinner, will occupy a 4,000-square-foot space that was most recently Cosimo’s Brick Oven. The Cosimo’s location closed earlier this year, leaving the mall with only one full-service restaurant, Toojay’s Original Gourmet Deli.

Ziti’s menu will include steaks, pork tenderloin and grilled ahi tuna, in addition to flatbreads and lettuce wraps, the release states. There will also be a full-service bar. “We’re confident that this new concept will deliver the perfect menu, quality of food and customer service that complements this shopping center and fills a need in Sarasota,” Westfield Southgate Marketing Director Sam Davidson said in the release.

The managing partner of Ziti will be Dustin Guimond. Guimond, according to the release, has more than 20 years of restaurant experience. He previously worked in Minnesota.

“We are very excited to partner with Westfield and introduce our brand to Sarasota,” Guimond said in the statement. — Mark Gordon